I am also an admirer of the asset class, especially for such characteristics as low-to-negative correlation to the traditional asset classes, biological growth component in the returns and positive impact on the ecology from putting land to growing trees over an extended period of time.

Having said that, I noticed several statements in your post that may be misleading without putting them into context.

1. “Timber products [...] will always be in demand”:
There is a great variety of timber products, and some of them are likely to be in demand at any given point in time, while the others may as well be not. The softwood in the US is a good example: as the housing starts dropped to the historical lows, the demand for this type of timber plummeted, forcing many sawmills to take downtimes or close.

2. “At the moment you can reasonably expect a return of between 10-14% per year”:
The expected return is very region- and species-specific, and to the best of my knowledge in a typical investment in the US the expected return is substantially lower. 10-14% is more representative of the fast-growing subtropical regions, which comprise a growing, but yet fairly small portion of the timberland investments worldwide.

3. “with timber there is nearly always a guarantee that you will get an excellent return on your investment”:
I would be very careful not to make such statement about ANY investment. There is ALWAYS a downside risk. You can buy timberland at the peak of the price cycle and get negative capital gain at the exit, you can overstate the growth rates and get lower cut timber income, you can overconcentrate in one particular species for which there is a limited end-use… The list goes on. The key is to understand the return drivers.

In summary, it appears to me that this post, despite claiming to provide “an unbiased overview of the pros and cons” gave a rather unbalanced picture of the asset class.